


Parasitoidism

by rehliamonster



Category: Undertale
Genre: Alien Biology, Alternate Universe - Swapfell, Blindness, Body Horror, Bondage, Cranial Pregnancy, Dark, Dissociation, Eggs, Eye Trauma, F/M, Forced Pregnancy, Gross, Hatchlings, Head Injury, Horror, Immobility, Kidnapping, Non-Consensual, Origin Story, Other, Oviposition, Sans Has a Bad Time, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Sensory Deprivation, Skull Fucking, Slime, Spiders, Suicidal Thoughts, Swapfell Sans, Torture, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 11:49:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14164200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rehliamonster/pseuds/rehliamonster
Summary: When Sans gets caught breaking into Muffet's lair thinking he can gain favour in the guard by dusting a clan leader, he expects to be punished.He doesn't expect it to be like this.





	Parasitoidism

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the mating behaviour of Jewel/Emerald Cockroach Wasps. 
> 
> This shit is disturbing, please tread with care and take a good hard long look at the tags.

“I hate you,” Sans snapped, almost screamed, twitching in his restraints. He would have clawed at the body above him or bit at it, but he couldn't move. 

The spider silk was wrapped so tight around his body that it almost seemed to dig into the bones, impossibly painful against the hardened surface. 

“That doesn't bother me, dearie,” Muffet told him with an overly affectionate giggle. “A lot of people hate me.”

She tugged at the strings that held him in place and Sans had to grind his teeth to suppress the wince, the groan of pain that threatened to escape him. 

“Ahuhuhu, don't hold back,” Muffet said, three of her eyes winking at him teasingly. “You'll want to react, soon.”

Sans scoffed, unimpressed by the threat. 

Muffet might be a gang leader, head of her clan, and certainly dangerous… but she was also just a clan leader, whereas he was a part of the royal guard, already commanding his own squad. He had worked his way up the ranks on nothing but guts and talent alone, despite his low health. Sans had gotten out of a lot of tight situations just by keeping calm and using the good head he had on his shoulders, and that was exactly what he would do now. 

“Suit yourself,” Muffet stated when he didn't react, too focused on running different scenarios through his skull that might allow him to escape. “Come help me, my sweetlings!” 

The touches were faint and ticklish, and utterly repulsive, but Sans still didn't react in spite of his disgust. Muffet would never allow her underlings to dust him, would never forego the EXP she could get from dusting him personally. And since she hadn't killed him yet, despite having the chance… he had some time to think while a small army of spiders marched over his wrapped up body. 

He could -

“Ahuhuhu~ What an interesting expression.” Muffet was leaning closer to him now, positively crooning. He wanted to yank forwards and snap his teeth at her, but he couldn't move. Muffet's spider silk was sturdy, but the silk of her clan mates was no laughing matter either despite their smaller size. 

Especially if they spun their silk into the thin ridges underneath his skull, into his eye sockets and his nasal bone and the edge of his jaw. 

He choked. 

Audibly and visibly, without even a chance to suppress it. He wouldn't be able to bite like this, wouldn't be able to talk, couldn't even blink. He didn't need to blink, but his sockets still stung from the silk in them. 

“Are you scared now?” Muffet tittered, stroking his zygomatic arch with one of her hands. So now she was brave enough to touch him, all of a sudden? Sans supposed he should be flattered that she needed him to be completely immobilised before she dared to come close to him, but the truth was that this situation did leave him… uneasy. 

Yes. Uneasy was the right word. 

“You should be,” Muffet continued. “It was very foolish of you to come here alone. Your overconfidence does you no favours, sweetie. Why did you come without backup?”

Sans tried to glare at her, to look confident and haughty, but he could feel that he wasn't doing a very good job. 

“Let me take a guess, little boy,” she said, her fangs gleaming in the low light of her backroom on a smile sharp enough to cut. “You are strong, but fragile. You have worked your way into a position of some low prestige, but you're still green behind the ears, so to say, and your standing is far from secure. Perhaps you noticed that your position didn't come with the increase of responsibility you truly wanted. And so you wished to impress. You wished to prove yourself worthy. Am I getting close, dearie?”

The pet name was nothing but mocking. Bitter. 

“You clearly don't know enough about the criminals you're dealing with. You thought it would be easy. Just spiders. Just some _vermin_ in a watering hole to stomp out and extinguish,” Muffet spat. “Let me tell you something, sugar skull. I don't like it when people are nasty to my spiders. Perhaps it's time for a lesson to show you why the guard doesn't come into my shop.”

Sans wished she would stop monologuing at him, even though this bought him more time. Her words made it hard to concentrate for some reason. Not that she was right of course, it was just, he had… he _had_ thought it would be easy. 

Nothing Muffet said to him could sting as much as his own shame. 

His own fear. 

He hated himself for feeling like this. 

Muffet was quiet now, tugging on the silks holding him to lower him to the ground. Sans tried to anticipate what she was planning, to brace himself for it. Dusting was unlikely, she liked playing too much from the way she behaved, and what she said sounded more like she wanted to teach him a lesson. A lesson to him, specifically, which meant he had to be alive for it to take effect. So dusting was definitely out. Humiliation and pain were most likely. Scarring him, perhaps, using her poison on him, have her spiders crawl over him. 

He could deal with all of those. He would be fine. Despite his low health, he was good at dealing with pain, he had trained himself into it. That hadn't been a requirement for the guard, he had done it just because he could. Because he thought it would pay to prove that he was unafraid of pain for the sake of a greater cause. 

He would be ready. 

Muffet looked down at him and smiled. She stepped up until she was standing over his head, one foot on each side of his skull, a position that demonstrated her power over him. Humiliation. 

“I think I found just the thing, dearie,” she told him, and carefully lifted her foot. 

She would kick him. Just like he predicted. He didn't have a choice but to keep his eyes open, but he would have done that anyway. He wasn't afraid. He knew what was coming and he wasn't afraid. 

Really. 

Muffet stepped out of her underwear and tossed it aside, leaving Sans with a clear view of her… what was that? He had never seen -

She lowered herself down. 

His jaw and sockets were pried open, almost ready made for him to scream.

He couldn't feel shame about it anymore when he did. 

The, the thing, it looked like a stinger but thicker and it was moving like a limb and she had _shoved it inside his eye socket_. It was inside him, wriggling around his skull, feeling over the inside of his cranial cavity as if to test the space there. Agitating his magic. 

“Ahuhuhu… uncomfortable? I'm afraid this is only the beginning, dearie,” Muffet said with an evil giggle. 

Sans couldn't see her anymore, one eye seeing nothing but the underside of her frilly skirts and the other without vision because there was a thick, hairy thing inside him that felt like a twitchy spider leg except it was between her legs. 

He felt violated and dirty. 

It was inside his skull. He would never feel clean again. He was an idiot, he shouldn't have come here, he hated and hated and hated himself -

“Ah…”

It was Muffet. Muffet was sighing, almost moaning. Something sticky touched the backside of his cranial cavity. Sticky and wet and glib. Many round somethings stuck together in a coating of slime. 

“Your screams sound lovely,” Muffet informed him, idly keeping up her one sided conversation. “I did notice… mmmmh, the change in them just now, in case you were wondering. Hah. Just a bit more now.”

The slimy things kept coming. Half of his skull was already coated in them. 

Sans’ breath hitched, his screams cracking. He felt bile rise in his nonexistent throat.

“Oooooh. Don't cry, dearie,” Muffet said, panting a little as she ran her hand over the top part of his skull more softly than anyone had ever touched him before. Sans wished she would stop. It made everything worse. “Or do. Your tears will nourish my spawn as I lay them inside you.” 

Spawn.

Eggs. 

Muffet was laying _eggs_ inside his skull. 

That horrible stickiness clinging to him was the slime coating the eggs, her hairy spider leg limb was some sort of egg laying… 

A fresh wave of spider eggs hit the back of his skull, and Sans passed out.

*

Sans blinked his eyes open slowly, the corners of his sockets still sticky with sleep.

Then he saw the ceiling, dark purple and covered in spiderwebs and spiders, and he realised the stickiness had different reasons. Memories flooded him and tried to burst out of his throat via a scream, but all that came out was a quiet whimper. 

“Help,” he croaked, sounding breathless. He immediately clamped his jaw shut.

That sounded pathetic, and nobody could afford to sound pathetic in this world. It was kill or be killed. 

Even though he would like for someone to come and save him. His brother perhaps. 

He missed his brother. He had to get back to him. 

A twitch of his limbs let him know that at least he wasn't tied down anymore. Time to get out of here. He could process what had happened to him later, he had to get out of here. 

His attempt to jump up ended with him flopping onto his side weakly. He groaned. His limbs felt loose and weak, and his head hurt. 

Oh stars. 

Don't think about it, he told himself. Don't. It wasn't there. It wasn't real. 

One step at a time then. He brought his arms underneath himself and pushed slowly until he was sitting upright. His gravity was off with how much heavier his skull suddenly was. The slime coating what was inside moved a little as he sat up, leaving him retching. 

Don't think about it. 

Don't think about it. 

Don't think about it. 

He managed to get his feet onto the floor and stand up, but he was swaying and shivering. It was a feeling as if he was a newborn, a babybones who had barely learned to walk. His skull began to pound with a low, pulsing sort of pain. 

Sans felt his breath quicken and wasn't sure if it was from the implication or the strain of moving. 

He hated how weak he felt. 

But weak or not, he could walk. He could get out of here. 

The room he was in was small, and completely covered in spiderwebs. Sans didn't have any illusions here, he knew that Muffet could likely feel his movements through the spider silk. But perhaps he could use that to his advantage. If he tugged the strings just the right way, make her think he was in one place when he was really in another… 

Sans gathered his magic to summon a bone. 

A weak yelp clawed its way out of his mouth when the magic fizzled out between his fingers before he could even firm it properly. 

“Ahuhuhu~ I wouldn't do that if I were you.”

The flinch running through his body caused him to stumble. Sans was barely able to brace himself with his arms before he keeled over completely. Now on all fours, he found himself breathing hard, exhausted from the short time he spent on his feet. 

“Why… why am I so weak?” he pressed out. 

“Because my little ones are feeding on your magic,” Muffet told him, stepping out of the shadows in a corner of the room. Had she been watching him stumble around? Sans felt humiliated. And nauseous. “That's why I laid my eggs in your skull, where your magic is strongest while your soul isn't summoned. And of course the skull is nice and sturdy. Practically impenetrable, very useful to let my little ones develop in peace. It's common knowledge among my people that she skull is the best place to lay eggs into.”

Sans hadn't known that. He didn't want to know anything about the fact that he was carrying eggs in his skull. But not knowing what was going on was somehow equally terrible. 

“What's going to happen with them?”

“They will feed on you and grow until they hatch, of course,” Muffet said. 

Grown and hatch, in his skull and then the spiderlings would come out of him… 

Sans bent over and threw up. 

His body was aware that something was stuck in him that didn't belong there, and flushed some of its magic out in the hope of taking the foreign objects with it. But Muffet's eggs were stuck into him with something stronger. They didn't even budge while he emptied himself out, until he was left even weaker than before. 

“Now, this won't do,” Muffet tutted. “You can't expend too much magic, or my little ones won't be able to grow.”

“Good,” Sans choked out. 

“Don't be stubborn now. Here, I brought you food to replenish your magic,” she insisted, pushing a donut at him. 

“No.” 

“Always so difficult,” Muffet sighed. A rapid movement of four of her hands left him trapped in a web of purple threads. His legs were tied together and his arms were bound behind his back, but that won't all. This went deeper than just his body, she went all the way to his soul. 

“No! Stop!” He began to thrash. As if it wasn't bad enough that she violated his skull, now her threads clung to his soul and made it impossible for him to even flinch away from her. 

She didn't acknowledge him at all, merely pulled on the threads. His soul hurt and he screamed, and Muffet used the opportunity to step closer and unceremoniously shove the donut into his mouth. He choked on it but she didn't let up, keeping his jaws pried open with three hands, while the fourth held the donut into his mouth and the other two kept tugging on the purple strings. She held the donut there until it began to dissolve, the magic from it travelling into his soul and from there into his body. 

Only then did she let go, letting him fall into and undignified heap on the floor. 

“You eat when I want you to, sugarskull” Muffet told him. “You're mine now. My little incubator~”

Sans thought that with the renewed magic in him, he might be able to try and attack her, to shoot a bullet or grab her or do anything else to get out of here. 

But he couldn't even stand up. 

The magic from the donut went straight from his soul and body to his skull, and he could feel the eggs pulse as they soaked it up. 

Muffet laughed at him when he started to sob.

*

Sans had gathered his energy for a while. He would need it.

He was sitting upright on the floor, deliberately not leaning on a wall. That would have been easier on his energy levels, but he didn't want to touch the webs there. 

It might alert Muffet. 

Over the past few hours, she had come into his room regularly to feed him, taking short breaks from her work to tend to him. She brought him food from her bakery, spider cider, and sometimes she told him stories, things that were happening in her shop. He had kept trying to break out, first walking with swaying step towards the door, then crawling when he couldn't hold himself up anymore. But no matter what he did, the door never gave, despite the fact that it swung open so easily whenever Muffet entered. He had tried to attack her too, but he hadn't even been able to leave a scratch on her. 

She had just left and forced another donut down his throat. He didn't know what time it was right now, if it was time to sleep or not, so right after a feeding was the best time if he wanted to be uninterrupted for a while. 

Sans took a deep breath. 

Hesitantly, he reached up with his left hand, touching the rim of his eye socket. 

There were still remnants of spiderwebs stuck there, but when he tugged at them they came away easily. He shuddered. Good. At least that was taken care of, it had been annoying him how itchy that was. He wiped the webs off his phalanges on his pants. 

Reaching up again, he pushed his phalanges into his eye socket. 

He didn't get in far before he hit a slimy film coating a round egg, probably a little smaller than a marble. It felt softer than a marble, but still hard. Not easily crushable. Bile rose in his throat again, but he swallowed it down. Not now. He couldn't afford to feel sick now. 

Ever so carefully, he wrapped two of his phalanges around the egg and began to pull. 

A searing pain shot through him, too intense to even let him scream. 

He fell over, unable to stop his head from smacking against the floor, which only made the pain worse. For a while, he couldn't do anything but lie there and breathe. He heard the door open, steps across the floor. 

“So, did you tried to remove them?” Muffet asked him pleasantly. 

He could only breathe, tears slipping out of his sockets again. 

“They are bound to your magic,” Muffet explained, daintily kneeling down next to him. “You can't pull them out, dearie.”

“I will,” Sans slurred, still sobbing in a pathetic mess on the floor. “Even if it kills me.”

“You misunderstood me,” Muffet chuckled. “The eggs release a substance that alters the composition of the magic in your body. Any attempt will be halted before you can go through with it.”

“You're lying,” Sans sobbed. He reached up and began to push his phalanges into his socket again, but to his own horror he found that no matter what, he ended up pulling them out again, either from the pain when he tried to tug at the eggs or for reasons he couldn't explain to himself. 

So he began scratching at this sockets instead, sobbing hysterically for reasons that had nothing to do with the pain or the grinding sensation of bone digging into bone. Perhaps he could scratch himself to death. 

Something in his mind made him stop scratching. 

He shivered. 

“Well, you can keep trying if you wish,” Muffet sighed. “Here. Have a donut.”

Sans made her force the donut into him instead of eating it by himself, just out of spite.

*

Sans woke up and he couldn't move.

He didn't understand. Did Muffet tie him up again? Why? 

He glanced down and found that no, he wasn't tied up. 

Frowning, he concentrated on his phalanges. It took him everything he had to make the bone of his smallest finger twitch, and then he felt knackered out, sweat beading on his skull. 

Inside of him, the eggs pulsed. 

A headache began building in him.

They had drained him to the point where he couldn't move anymore. 

He whined. Perhaps Muffet would hear him. Perhaps she would come and feed him and then he could at least stand up. He immediately felt pathetic for thinking that way. He didn't want to rely on his abductor to do something as simple as move. 

But nobody came. 

Hours passed and he was left to lay there on the ground, sometimes managing a twitch but nothing more. He even managed to tug at a string of spider silk and he was sure that this would alert at least some of the spiders if not Muffet herself. Still nothing. 

It was only him and his thoughts and sensations. 

Each breath, each blink, the subtle itch of the eggs in his cranium. 

Why had he done this? He wished me had never come here. Was his brother worried about him? Was Papyrus searching for him? Sans wanted his brother to come, but he was also scared what would happen if he did. If he came and Muffet did the same thing to Papyrus… 

The door opened. 

Sans had to wait until the steps had crossed half the room before he could see Muffet. He couldn't turn his head. 

“It seems my little ones are progressing through their developmental stages quickly,” Muffet said with a long look at him, culminating in a long look into his eye sockets. 

Stars, were the eggs visible from the outside? 

How disgusting. 

“I apologise for my tardiness, dearie. There was a bit of a commotion in my shop today,” she told him while plucking a donut apart into smaller pieces, which she then dropped into his mouth. “The royal guard can be so bothersome with their raids…”

He blinked, another whine coming out of his mouth. 

“Oh? No, sweetling, don't misunderstand, they weren't here for you,” Muffet giggled. “It was just the dogs and their commander sniffing around for drugs again.”

The dogs. That had been _his_ squad. 

“Oh yes, they found someone new for the position of course,” Muffet said, as if she wasn't dashing his dreams even further, as if this was merely a conversation about the weather patterns in the underground. “They did have a backup. Rather necessary with how frail you are. Don't blame them, it makes sense and they do have to ensure the guard functions well at all times, so you were bound to be replaceable. Unlike here with me. Incubating eggs in flesher monsters can get rather messy, I'm sure you an imagine. Skeletons have always been a preferred option and with them in such short supply, you're actually very unique to me. Isn't that nice?”

Tears were leaking out of Sans’ eye sockets, fuelled by the energy the donut was giving him, but quickly drying up as the eggs soaked up the bulk of the magic. He couldn't even sob anymore. 

“If this upsets you, just remember that it's all your own fault for coming here,” Muffet said, a great deal of satisfaction evident on her face. 

She patted Sans skull and stood up, walking out to leave him lying on the floor in the dim room. 

Alone and unable to move.

*

It was dark.

Not merely dim, as it always was in the windowless room Sans was trapped in, but completely dark. An utter blackness that was all encompassing. 

He was not breathing. 

Strictly speaking, he didn't need to, but it was still deeply uncomfortable. It meant he had no input in the form of smells, and it was an indicator for how low his magic was.

This was also supported by how loose his bones felt. As if his body was long cohesion, the individual bones no longer held quite so tightly together by the force of his magic. 

Was this why it was so dark too?

Had he lost so much magic that his eye lights wouldn't function anymore? 

Or had the eggs simply grown to the point where they had overtaken his sockets completely, spilling out of the openings and forcing the magic that gave him his sight aside?

He had no idea. 

He could still hear at least, a faint scuttle outside that was likely spiders marching past, and if he really strained himself he could almost bake out the hum of the large ovens in Muffet's bakery, the almost imperceptibly soft clatter of the baking trays as the spiders did their jobs. 

It went on without break, and so he couldn't use it to tell the time. 

Sans didn't know how long he merely existed there, trapped in his own body. 

He could feel the eggs tremble slightly every now and then, the spiders developing inside apparently far along now to twitch inside their eggs. 

Disgusting. 

The eggs were disgusting. 

He was disgusting. Disgusting for having allowed this to happen to him, for having been so stupid and overconfident to come here, thinking he could dust some spiders and then rise up in the guard. Alphys had been right when she told him he wasn't ready yet. He should have listened to her. He was just a stupid rookie without any experience. It didn't matter how much he had trained with his brother, he had clearly been dealing with stuff that was too much for him and now he was reaping the consequences for thinking he could take it. 

He missed his brother. 

Papyrus was so cool. So tall and strong. Sans had always envied that, the dense, long bones and the magical power his brother wielded. True, his training had left Sans with a lot of tricks up his sleeve, but at the end of the day Sans was still only a monster with a single hit point. Without the protection of his younger brother he would never have made it to the point where he could train hard enough to survive on his own. His brother might smoke and drink and be lazy in a way that Sans found appalling, but he was still strong and always had his back. 

He missed Paps. 

He should have told his brother how much he appreciated him more often. Papyrus deserved it. He deserved a much better older brother, one that was strong enough to protect him in their kill or be killed world, instead of the other way around. Sans wanted to be big and powerful and stand in front of Papyrus, keeping their enemies away. 

Was that why he had trained so hard, deep down?

Perhaps. 

Yeah. 

Why had it been so hard to admit before, and why was it so easy to admit now?

Everything could have been so much easier. 

If only he had allowed himself to have these thoughts sooner. 

If only he had been more mature, to have realised this earlier. 

If only he had decided to earn his strength and social power another way. 

If only he hadn't come here… 

The soft background noises of the spider bakery drone on along with his thoughts.

And Sans hated himself, silently, blindly, piling thought upon thought because it was all he could still do, because he couldn't scream like he wanted to.

*

“Bro?!”

What?

“Bro!!”

Sans didn't understand. 

“Holy shit. Oh fuck. This is disgusting. What _are_ these things? Brother? Sans?! Can you hear me?!”

Why was he disturbed? 

He had been floating in the dark, and now his head hurt. 

It hurt so bad. 

“Sans, please, please answer me, please give me a sign you can hear me…! Shit. They're not clogging up his acoustic meatus… but they're all over the sockets. Interfering with the magic?”

Blinding pain. 

“Fuck. I can't get them out. Okay. Okay. It's going to be okay Sans, I promise, it's all going to be okay, there's a crack in one of these things, we can - “

It hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt -

“ _What the fuck. What the fuck is this._ ”

He wanted to die. He had wanted to die from the moment this all started but he wanted it even more now. 

Something twitchy moved in his eye socket. 

“That's a spider. That's a fucking spider, a skeleton spider, oh shit, oh Sans, Sans I'm so fucking sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry…”

Something moved in his skull, deeper than the socket before. 

A crack. 

“No. No no no no no don't you fuckers _dare_.”

Something warm and soothing. It made the pain go away. 

But only a little. 

There was still the sensation of something breaking open, spattering slime all over the inside of his skull, followed by the skittering movements of something hard and multilegged making its way out. 

Sans still wanted to die. 

“Okay. Okay. That's better. Oh shit. Sans. Sans hang in there, okay? I've got you. I promise I've got you. I have my healing magic, they're not gonna crack your skull open.”

He wished he could say out loud that cracking his skull open sounded great actually. That it sounded so much better than the crawling feeling as so many small and hard bodies skuttled around inside of him, only to pour put of his sockets and crawl over his skull. 

If his skull cracked, it would be over. 

“Shit. Okay. That's a lot… oh fuck. I'm gonna throw up. I can't fucking believe she did this to you. I'm - “

A retching sound. 

Sans understood the feeling. Some of the crawling bodies were all over his throat, and there were more pouring out of his sockets still. He also felt jealous. He wished he could still retch. But then again, he didn't deserve it. 

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Okay. I’m good. I'm good. We're both good. That was a big one. It's okay. A bit more, alright? We can get through this.”

Thousands of tiny crawly boney spider legs, marching over the inside of his cranium, and then on the outside. Trailing slime in their wake, and remnants of egg shells. 

His punishment for all he did wrong. 

He didn't deserve anything. 

“Sans. Sans I... “

Sobbing. 

All these noises that Sans couldn't make. Rage welled inside of him. He wanted it all to go away. To go back to floating in the darkness. 

To not feel his head buzzing with skeletal arachnids. 

“I'm sorry I didn't find you sooner. I tried. I really did, I told the guard and I even… I talked to some guys and they backed me up after the guard wouldn't listen to me, but it took so long and I… I should've come here sooner.”

Spiders and spiders. His skull was still full of them. There had been so many eggs, first tiny and then larger and now the spiders that came out of them were even larger. One of them tripped over his nasal hole and got stuck there, its skittering legs tickling the inside. 

It was plucked off, but it was too late. Another sensation that continued to ghost on him, a filth that would never leave. 

“I'm sorry. Sans I'm so fucking sorry.”

Some of the spiders scratched him as they crawled out of his eye sockets. The healing warmth that swept over him took care of it, glazing over each little gauge. 

Sans wished the scratches would deepen instead, until they ground his whole skull to dust. 

He wished he could scratch himself to make it go faster. 

“It's… I think it's almost over.”

Was it? Would he finally be allowed to die?

“Yeah. Shit. See? Your bones are reattaching themselves. Shit. I was worried about that. Okay. You're going to be okay, you hear me?”

His whole body was itching and itching and itching. He wanted his bones to detach again. To return to the pile of useless bones he had been before.

He wanted to hurl his bones into the magma of Hotland, scalded and liquefied in fire. 

He could be clean in death. 

“There we go. That's it. That was it. Sans? Sans can you hear me?”

Dim light. 

His vision gradually flickered back, hazy and vague after however long it had been since he had last been able to see. 

He couldn't make sense of it, until he felt something reach inside him and wipe. 

The slime still coating his skull was cleared out, along with the broken fragments of the eggshells, with touches that were nothing but gentle. 

They reminded him of Muffet. 

He wanted to die. 

“There. That's better, isn't it?”

It all came back into focus. 

His brother's face over him, wearing an expression of horror and worry. There was a tooth missing from his upper jaw, a crack running up from the gaping hole almost to the eye socket. 

Another failure to add to the pile. 

“Sans?” Papyrus asked. He sounded so gentle and so scared. Sans should reassure his baby bro. He could feel his magic slowly build up again now that it wasn't hogged by the fucking eggs, so he should manage at least that much. A grunt maybe. Just a sign that he was, unfortunately, still alive.

His newly formed sight sharpened further as his magic increased, bringing the ceiling in the background into focus. 

Above his brother's head in the spiderwebs that had always clung to the ceiling sat hundreds of pearly white, bony spiders, with limbs and bodies that looked as if they had been created from phalanges and vertebrae and teeth. And even at this distance he could see that all eight sockets on their tiny skulls were shaped exactly like his. 

He screamed. 

He screamed at full volume, feeling it scratch after so much time of disuse, he screamed even though it made his brother flinch and shout and he kept screaming when his brother tried to hug him. 

Sans stared at the spider babies and the spider babies stared at him and he screamed and they all screamed back.

*

“She's dead.”

There was little emotion in Sans’ voice. He didn't know what to feel. Relief, certainly, but that only went so far. 

“Yeah. Sorry, I know you probably would've wanted to… but I couldn't have done it otherwise. She commanded the spiders. Without her to control them, it was easier to dust the majority of her clan and get to you,” Papyrus explained, the light falling through the window catching on the gold tooth he had gotten to replace the one he lost. It looked tacky and wrong, and it distracted Sans enough that he needed a moment to really process what his brother just told him. 

Leave it to his brother to defeat one of the most feared clan leaders in the underground. Even with a couple of monsters to help him, that was an accomplishment. Muffet had been strong.

Rage. 

Sans hadn't known there was space for so much rage in him. 

“It's weird,”Papyrus said. “But I'm glad I did it.”

Sans said nothing. 

Muffet was dead. 

He hated her, but he still had questions. There had been issues in the...

The aftermath. 

Sans had tried a lot of things, and found he couldn't do them. 

Toss himself into lava. 

Or the core. 

Or into a puzzle trap. 

He had tried to go to the queen and tried to go to Alphys and to Undyne. 

He had tried to scratch at his sockets, at the scars his ordeal had left on them, or his throat until it all went away. 

He had lied down and focused on his despair and disgust, hoping he would fall down. 

Nothing worked.

He found his steps diverted whenever he tried to go to a place with a desire to die in his soul, he stopped scratching before he ever did any true damage to himself, he could lie in one place for weeks without ever reaching blissful oblivion. 

Sans was still unable to kill or harm himself.  
And that meant that the altering effect of Muffet and her spiderlings was still _in him_ and he had no idea how to get it out. 

She had soiled him forever and now that she was dead he couldn't force her to remove the stain. 

This was the first real conversation he had with his brother since the day Papyrus had found him and he was already out of his mind. 

He felt helpless. 

He hated it. 

“Sans?” Papyrus asked. 

“Don't call me that,” Sans snapped.

“Bro - “

“No.”

It made something in him crawl. Both of these names, though for different reasons.

“...okay. What else do you want me to call you?”

Sans stopped at the offer, feeling surprised, but pleasantly so. 

Yes. 

Right.

He could decide. He was in control. He had agency again. No longer was he weak and trapped in his own body, unable to move or speak or see while the magic was eaten out of him by a squirming clutch of -

Deep. Fucking. Breaths. 

He never wanted to feel that powerless again. _Never_. 

With Muffet dead, that left his brother as her killer as the de facto leader of her clan anyway. And by extension that meant Sans was wielding that power too, more of it actually, since it was in a very real way _his_ clan now regardless of how much that thought made him want to throw up for the rest of time. 

And so what his mind settled on, the most powerful thing he could think of stopping short of calling himself ruler of the underground, was…

“Milord. You can call me milord.”

The pity in his brother's eyes made him growl, and then it thankfully vanished. 

“Sure,” Papyrus told him. There was an awkward pause, before he added, “milord.”

“Good. Now, what did you want to say?”

“It's Alphys. She's been coming over since she heard about us defeating Muffet and she said she'd be interested in training you,” Papyrus said. 

It was a sentence that would have made him happy once. Now, all that Sans felt was bitterness that it had taken something like this for the guard captain to even consider him, and a grim determination to make the most of it in spite of that. 

His brother could lead the spider clan alone after all then. It wasn't as if Sans was particularly keen on that anyway. It was disgusting. Unworthy. Gross. Power, yes, but one that Sans would be glad to wield through an intermediary. 

Instead, he would be training under the captain. Take whatever he needed from her and use it for his own ends. She wasn't to be trusted after how shed failed him, but he'd use her all the same. 

One brother on the side of the law, the other opposite him, both working together in high positions on each side. 

Power. 

It was all about power. 

“Heh. Now she comes crawling. Fine. I'll tell her I'll accept,” Sans hissed, quiet and precise, intent on sharing his thoughts it his brother now. “You can take care of the clan in the meantime. And then we'll show them. I'll show them all.”

Papyrus said nothing and looked worried. Sans found he didn't care. For far too long he had worried about what others thought, about prestige and protecting and so many other stupid things that he never should have concerned himself with. He had been naive. 

If Papyrus didn't like this then too bad. He didn't get it. Sans didn't understand how his brother wouldn't get it after what he had seen, but if Paps could still be worried about Sans declaring his intent to be strong above all else, then he was clearly too stupid have his opinions considered at all. He'd have to follow in Sans’ lead instead. Sans had led the dogs, he could lead his brother.

Sans would show him too, if necessary.


End file.
